


Fish Fingers And Custard

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [14]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen, Other, Randomness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AKA <i>The Bonus Footage.</i>  This will be a series of random scenes from the <i>Marvelous Tale</i> ‘verse that didn’t really fit into the main storyline, but existed in my head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dog Days

**Author's Note:**

> Whenever I develop a fictional world (particularly one as big as involved as the one for _Marvelous Tale_ ‘verse) I always wind up with a lot of little scraps of scenes. They don’t really fit into the relevant overall narrative, but they get jotted down for character development and the like. Since I had them, and they’re a good break while I work on more plot-heavy stuff, I decided why not do a Bonus Footage Reel?
> 
> These scenes will be posted here in _Fish Fingers And Custard_ as they get written and beta-ed. They won’t be in any sort of order (though I will time-stamp everything). Subject matter will be all over the place. Hopefully, they will be fun. Enjoy!
> 
> As always, major thanks and kudos to **like-a-raven**!

**Chapter Summary:** The Reaper wasn't the first stray Clint Barton brought home.

 

**Dog Days**

_April 2002_

The mission was designed to be a lightning strike: Go in, take out two targets, get out with the bad guys’ hard drive without tipping off anyone in the vicinity. It was close-up work, not Clint’s usual fare, but being adaptable was one of the things SHIELD paid him for.

The job was slightly complicated by the fact that the targets were holed up in a large, abandoned office building. It had taken days to pinpoint the exact unit. Fortunately, there weren’t any nosy neighbors to work around . The building housed mostly rats and a few other illegal squatters: no one who was going to come investigate if they were to hear a commotion. 

Clint made sure there was little to hear. 

He slipped into the office unit through an air duct and took down one of the targets without the man even knowing he was there. The other man was dispatched before he could completely articulate the word _fuck_. Keeping his gun at ready just in case of any surprises, Clint touched his comm. Coulson, who was waiting in the stairway, would be taking care of the hard drive while Clint cleared the area and provided cover in case there were any surprises.

“Hawkeye to Aerie. The targets are down. Move in.”

_“Copy, Hawkeye. I’m on my way.”_

Clint followed procedure and started methodically checking the rest of the unit while Coulson made his way up. As their intel had said, there were no other people present. Clint saw nothing but room after room of dirt and debris as he worked his way down the hall.

The dog came out of nowhere.

Clint heard the click of toenails and a warning growl a second before there was a blur of brindled fur and teeth in his peripheral vision. The dog lunged for him and Clint had to backpedal quickly as he fired off two shots, dropping the animal.

“ _Shit_ ,” he said, sagging briefly back against the wall. 

Coulson appeared at his side, his own gun drawn. He raised his eyebrows at the dead dog, then looked to Clint. “You okay?”

“Fine.” Clint nodded toward what had once been a large, impressive conference room. “It looks like they kept all the computer equipment in there.”

“Good. We’ll be out of here in a few minutes.” 

Coulson would deal with the computer. Clint shook his head as he looked over his third take-down for this mission. What a waste. 

It had been a clean kill and, Clint knew, a necessary one. The dog was large and well-muscled with the distinct look of an animal that had been carefully cultivated to be vicious. Clint cast a dark look at the bodies of the two men he’d killed. _Fucking typical_ , he thought.

He knelt down briefly to take a closer look. The dog was a female, and. . . Clint frowned, moving to lift the animal’s front leg so he could get a better look at her belly.

“Shit,” he said again, for much different reasons this time. Clint got up and went to take another look around.

****

No matter how efficient one was, breaking down computer equipment took a little time. Everything had to be disconnected and properly packed away in the foam-lined case. Coulson breathed a sigh of relief when he stowed away the last piece and shut the lid.

“Got it, Clint,” Coulson called, setting the locks. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Right behind you,” Clint said, coming down the hall. 

The chopper was waiting for them on the roof. Coulson climbed the stairs with a sense of preliminary satisfaction. The mission had been textbook perfect. He was busy mentally calculating how many days were likely to pass before the bosses of the two men sent around someone to check on them. They had gone up two flights before Coulson glanced back at his agent and noticed the cardboard box that Clint was carrying under one arm.

“What the hell is that?” Coulson asked.

The question was really unnecessary. Coulson could see into the box well enough to see a dirty towel and an indeterminate number of small brindled bodies. A faint, high-pitched whine confirmed what he was looking at. Coulson halted. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Heading for the extraction point,” Clint said, trotting by him.

“I meant what are you doing with the _puppies_ , Clint.”

Coulson didn’t know why he was bothering to ask. He knew exactly what Clint was doing. 

“Taking them with us.”

 _Oh, for God’s sake._ It wasn’t especially news to Coulson that Clint had a few only-half-hidden soft spots, and a fondness for animals was one of them. Coulson had no problem with this, really. Given what they did for a living, anything that helped an agent hold on to humanity and compassion was a good thing. But, damn it, there was a time and a place to indulge it and that time and place was not during a mission. During a mission you kept your ass focused.

“Clint, we’re SHIELD,” Coulson said, starting up the stairs again. “We’re not a dog rescue.”

Clint looked back at him. “I couldn’t leave them, Phil. I killed their mother.”

“You did what you had to do. Their mother would have ripped your throat out.”

“Yeah, I know. I know I did the right thing. Just like I know that leaving them back there would be the wrong thing.” Clint adjusted the box under his arm. “They’re too little. They’d starve to death before anyone who might give a damn found them. That was the whole reason for the quick hit, wasn’t it? So it will take a while before anyone realizes those guys are dead?”

“Clint. . .” Coulson could actually feel himself starting to lose this argument. Damn it, Clint could pick the most inconvenient times to take a moral stand.

Sure, Coulson had his own soft spots about some things, but collateral damage was just part of their job. Clint knew that. The hard truth of the matter was that a litter of puppies didn’t really rate special consideration.

“Fine,” Clint said. “Would a tactical argument make you feel better? Do you want four hungry puppies whining and potentially drawing attention to that office ahead of schedule?” 

Coulson knew it was bullshit, of course. The tiny puppies in the box didn’t have that kind of lung capacity, but at least Clint’s point sounded better on paper. Still, just wait until Fury heard about this.

They had reached the door to the roof and Clint paused, grinned smugly down at him. “Come on, Phil. This is why we’re the good guys, right?”

Agent Dockery had been dispatched to fly them out. “Call for a cab?” he shouted over the sound of the rotor blades as they piled into the helicopter.

“You’ve definitely earned your tip,” Clint replied, scrambling in and settling the box securely in his lap.

Dockery peered over into the box. “Hey, are those puppies?”

“Shut up and fly,” Coulson said.

*****

Compared to some of the roommates Clint had had in his life, sharing his living quarters with four puppies was actually pretty pleasant.

For the first few nights they slept in a box right by his bed, but once Clint stopped feeling the need to watch them round-the-clock, they graduated to sleeping in the bathroom with a baby gate across the door. It served well enough as a temporary kennel. According to the vet who looked after the dogs in SHIELD’s K-9 unit, the pups were about three weeks old, just coming off the age of needing to be bottle fed. That meant some messy lessons, teaching them to eat soft food out of a bowl.

Feeding them in the bathtub made clean-up much easier, even if it led to an epic drain clog or two.

Coulson made it clear—five times—that Clint’s little side project didn’t excuse him from his job. He was still expected to attend training and briefings as usual. Coulson was still looking a little exasperated over the whole situation, but Clint just shrugged it off. Okay, maybe it hadn’t been the most professional move of his career. Clint really didn’t care. He just packed the four pups up into a towel-lined laundry basket and took them along as he went about his day.

“It’s good,” Clint told Coulson. “They get socialized this way.”

Very well socialized. _Everyone_ wanted to play with the puppies. Clint thought that must just be the nature of SHIELD. They didn’t get many opportunities for warm-fuzzies on the job, so when a situation did present itself people were all over it. There was always someone willing to babysit if Clint needed to give something else his full attention. 

“The vet says this way they get used to a lot of different people,” Clint said, tracking the movements of the puppies as they explored Coulson’s office. 

Alpha was sniffing along the base of a bookcase. Bravo was attacking the laces of Clint’s boots. Charlie was chasing a tennis ball across the room, knocking it along another few inches whenever he tried to get his small teeth into it. 

“Now, when I start looking for homes for them, they won’t be shy around new people,” Clint added. “Watch your feet. I think Delta went under your desk.”

Distracted from his computer, Coulson pushed away from his desk a bit, peering down underneath. He bent down with a sigh, coming up with a wriggling brown puppy.

“That’s nice. Why are they in my office?” he asked.

“Because _I’m_ in your office, and I’m doing what you told me to do. You said if I was bringing them back, I got to be responsible for them, right? Oh, hey look,” he added, grinning. “I think Delta likes you. Well, there’s no accounting for taste.”

Delta had squirmed up against Coulson’s chest and was enthusiastically licking his chin. Coulson looked resigned to this state of affairs. He raised his eyebrows at Clint. “Are you going to be cool with giving them up?”

Clint shrugged. “Sure,” he said. He sat down in the floor, using one hand to gently wrestle Bravo. “It’s not like I can keep four dogs in my quarters forever. They’re going to be big.”

The vet had taken an educated guess at the breed. Mom had clearly been a pit bull, but the puppies were mixed. “High percentage of Boxer, I’d say. Maybe even a little bit of Lab,” the vet had told Clint. In other words, these dogs were going to need some room to spread out.

“But I’ll make sure they get good homes. Hell, I have the ability to background-check people.”

And Clint fully planned to use it. No one (human, canine, whatever) deserved to be dumped in a bad home.

****

As Coulson expected, Clint took a fair amount of (mostly good-natured) ribbing over his puppy rescue. Variations on _Barton! Better gear up. We have reports of a kitten stuck in a tree in Pakistan_ were rife for the first couple of weeks. There was also the day someone duct-taped a Care Bear to the door of his quarters.

The puppies enjoyed playing with it. And by “playing” Coulson meant “dismembering.”

Clint just let it roll off and carried on with no apologies. That was a quality that Coulson had always admired about Clint, even though it had given him some serious heartburn at times. The kid wasn’t afraid to go against the grain, and when he did nothing could shake his resolve. 

For his part, Coulson had come around on the subject of the puppies. At the end of the day, bringing them back to SHIELD had been fairly innocuous. Besides, Coulson had always rooted for the underdog, no pun intended. Hell, that was one of the reasons Coulson had recruited Clint in the first place and then applied to be his supervising officer.

Clint’s pack rapidly outgrew the laundry basket he used to haul them around, graduating to collars and leashes. Given that energetic puppies weren’t exactly adept at moving as a unit, watching _that_ particular exercise was pure hilarity.

Clint also, Coulson heard through the grapevine, got permission from Agent Woodbine to start leaving the puppies with the K-9 Unit for a few hours every day.

“I’m not wussing out on the responsibility,” Clint said a little defensively. “I just think they should spend some time around other dogs.”

Coulson just held up his hands in a _don’t shoot me_ gesture. “I actually think it’s a good idea,” he said.

Besides, it was worth it just to see Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta come running in a miniature stampede as soon as they spotted Clint at the end of each day.

*****

By the time the puppies hit ten weeks, Clint started getting serious about finding homes for them. He didn’t have to look very far.

Agent Moretti fell head-over-heels in love with Alpha. Clint saw no downside to this. Moretti and her husband were about as nice as people came and their daughter was bouncing off the walls with excitement over getting a puppy. 

Bravo, who was a little more assertive than her siblings, caught Agent Woodbine’s eye and he asked Clint if he could “adopt” her into SHIELD K-9. Clint’s knee-jerk reaction had been _hell no_ , but once he stopped to think about it, he reconsidered. SHIELD dogs received better care than some military units Clint could name. Besides, this way Clint could keep tabs on her, and she looked damned happy out and about on base with her new handler.

Charlie wound up moving upstate. He was adopted by Agent Quigley from Linguistics. Quigley was retiring after thirty years with SHIELD and he and his wife had actually gone and bought a farm. 

“Yeah. You wouldn’t believe the jokes,” Quigley said. “It’s a great place though. Orchard. Fishing pond. And I always said once I retired and finally had the time, I was getting a dog. I think the timing is trying to tell me something.”

That left Delta. “No worries, Bud,” Clint said. “Best for last.”

*****

It was actually Coulson who found a home for Delta. He did it by making a call to Arlington. “Valerie? How would you feel about a puppy?”

The question wasn’t totally out of left field. Valerie had always been a dog person and Chester, her Springer Spaniel, had died last year. She’d started making noises about looking at rescues and visiting the SPCA. The way Coulson saw it, Valerie adopting Delta would be a win all around. Delta would have a home in the lap of canine luxury and Valerie would have (once Delta grew a bit) a large an intimidating-looking dog in her house.

“You know, Phil,” Valerie said, sounding amused, “Arlington isn’t really that dangerous.”

“I know.” They’d had this discussion before. “It’s just. . .”

“It’s just that I live alone and you’re a worrywart.”

“And a dog is a deterrent,” Coulson added. “Although so far I don’t think Delta’s met a person he hasn’t loved on sight. He’ll still _look_ like a dog people won’t want to mess with. I can bring him down. You two can see if you like each other.”

“Sure.” Phil could hear Valerie smiling on the other end of the line. “Bring him down. We’ll check each other out. And, hey, as a bonus I get a visit from you.”

It was actually harder to sell Clint on the idea of giving Delta to Valerie.

“The chick you hook up with in DC?” Clint asked incredulously. 

Coulson couldn’t exactly blame Clint for his word choices or his skepticism. The truth was that his relationship with Valerie went a bit deeper than a semi-regular stop over for sex, but Coulson didn’t advertise that. Ever since they had reconnected six years ago, he had worked hard to keep Valerie separate from SHIELD. That was both for her safety, and because Coulson like having a corner of his life that was removed from work. Not even Fury really knew the exact nature of the relationship.

Actually, knowing Fury, the man probably _did_ , but Coulson opted to hang on to a few shreds of sanity by not thinking about that.

“She likes dogs. She’ll take good care of him.” Coulson rolled his eyes at Clint’s frown. “Come on, would I really suggest a bad home for him? I’ll take him down and if they don’t get along I’ll bring him back.”

Coulson made the trip by train with Delta in a carrier by his seat. Delta wasn’t thrilled about the turn of events and whined loudly and pitifully all the way from New York to DC. Coulson didn’t think he’d ever gotten so many dirty looks from bystanders in his life. He was fairly frazzled by the time he met Valerie at the station.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Valerie crooned (to the dog, not to Coulson). “Let’s get you home.”

Once they were at Valerie’s house Delta seemed to forget his mental and emotional trauma within five minutes of being let loose in the kitchen. As Coulson had predicted, Valerie and Delta took right to each other. She had christened him _Jackson_ in under an hour.

“So, I take it he’s a keeper?” Coulson asked, watching from one of the stools around Valerie’s kitchen island. 

Valerie was sitting in the floor playing with Jackson. She picked the puppy up, cuddled him under her chin, and looked over his head at Phil with a pair of mischievous dark brown eyes. “Oh, he’s definitely a keeper.”

Two days later, Coulson was back in New York with half a dozen pictures to show to Clint as proof that Jackson had it made.

“Yeah, okay. I guess she’ll do,” Clint said, looking at the picture of Jackson passed out on an oversized dog bed surrounded by a small horde of toys. He handed the pictures back to Coulson. “Thanks for finding him a place.”

“It was no big deal,” Coulson said, leaning back comfortably in his chair. “So, four strays, four homes. Not bad. Mission accomplished, kid.”

“Yeah.” Clint did look pretty damn satisfied. “Score one for the good guys.”

“How does it feel to be an empty-nester?”

“My quarters are way too quiet, but I’ll get used to it,” Clint said. “I guess it’s back to business as usual. Any missions coming up for us?”

“We’re hearing some rumblings coming out of Argentina. The intel is still coming together, but if it’s good we could be heading down there in a month or so.”

Clint grinned.

“Can’t wait.”


	2. Trust Exercise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Reaper is still new to SHIELD, and trust is a bit thin on the ground on both sides. Clint stumbles onto a way bridge the gap a little. Ninety minutes of freedom isn't a bad start.

_November 2005_

For someone who had joined SHIELD at metaphorical gunpoint, Song seemed awfully attached to her trainee uniform.

Clint watched Song work her way through the lunch line, on her own as usual, a small figure in SHIELD black. The rest of the trainee class was in the mess hall as well, and boisterous conversation echoed in the high-ceilinged room. Clint couldn’t really blame them for blowing off steam. Last week they had finished the truly “boot camp” portion of their training and were now enjoying private quarters, increased downtime, and lifted restrictions.

The mandatory uniform requirement was one of the things that had fallen by the wayside. Outside of tactical situations, agents were allowed to wear civvies of varying degrees of formality. That privilege was one that trainees were always quick to jump on, and this class was no exception.

Except for Song. She was still in uniform. She didn’t need to be. Song had joined the trainee class several weeks after its official start, but she had jumped in, made up the work, and more than proven that she could keep up. That meant that she was subject to the same calendar as the rest of the recruits. 

Clint shook his head. Song was an odd bird, he thought as he dropped off his tray and left the mess hall. She was probably trying to make a point of some kind.

The real answer wandered up and smacked him across the back of the head an hour later while he was practicing on the range.

“Fuck,” Clint muttered. He should have realized, and frankly he should have thought of it weeks ago.

He and Coulson had caught Song in the field. Clint had quite literally hauled her unconscious ass out of a back alley in Bulgaria. It wasn’t like they’d allowed her to go home and pack before whisking her off to SHIELD headquarters. Song had arrived in New York with some odds and ends in a backpack. Security had confiscated a good bit of that.

She was still in uniform because she didn’t have anything else.

And it wasn’t like she’d had any way to remedy that. Song, like the other trainees, drew a salary and she did have access to her bank accounts. (Fury had decided that if the Reaper was going to run, a little thing like lack of funds wasn’t going to stop her.) Still, her options would have been limited to the base PX. While it was pretty comprehensive, clothing-wise you could spruce up your supply of socks and underwear there, but that was about it. 

The other trainees had been granted regular free days when they’d been allowed to leave base and run errands. Song, because of her “might be a danger to others” status, was restricted to base, only allowed to leave if she was escorted by Clint or Coulson. Granted, they’d been preoccupied by other things, but it had certainly never occurred to Clint to offer to take her anywhere to stock up on. . .whatever eighteen-year-old girls needed to stock up on. 

Song had never requested an escort off of the base, either. Clint wondered if she was trying to prove that she wasn’t a complainer, or (what he thought was far more likely) she was just too damn proud to ask.

Okay, maybe in the grand scheme of things, Song’s clothes or lack thereof was a frivolous problem. But the way Clint saw it, it was a symptom of a bigger problem. Song was a SHIELD trainee and in Clint’s book that meant she should get to enjoy the same privileges as the rest of the class, within reason. Having enough clothes so that she could drop the uniform sure as hell should be within reason.

Solving the problem would be a little tricky. Clint had a feeling he’d have to approach it a certain way to get Song to accept his help. He decided to bide his time for a few days. He and Song both had Thursday off. That would be the most logical time to put his plan into play.

He found her in the mess hall at breakfast on Thursday morning, sitting alone at her usual table. Clint sat down across from her.

“So, I need to head over to the mall today and pick up a few things,” he said, reaching for the salt shaker. “Want to ride along?”

He glanced up to see Song just looking at him. Song tended to regard him with one of two expressions: blank reserve or a slightly confused frown. This was the latter.

“Ride along?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s a nice day. I thought you might like to get off the base for a few hours, run some errands. Isn’t there anything you need?”

For a few more seconds, Song eyed him like she was trying to figure out what he was up to. Then she seemed to give an internal shrug and picked up her mug of tea.

“There are a few things I wouldn’t mind picking up,” she said.

“Okay. Meet me at the motor pool at 1030 hours and we’ll grab lunch while we’re out.”

*****

The mall near the base was decent and was heavily frequented by SHIELD personnel. After six years, Clint knew the place like the back of his hand. That was one of the reasons he’d picked it as their destination.

“As far as stores go, it’s pretty much the usual suspects,” Clint said. “But you should be able to find whatever you need.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” Song said.

She had clearly aimed to look as civilian as possible on this outing, mostly wearing her athletic gear. Of course, her only jacket had the SHIELD emblem on both shoulders, which kind of killed the effect. 

“Okay. Take this,” Clint said, handing her a basic, SHIELD-issue cell phone. “Let’s say we’ll meet up in the food court in an hour and a half? My number’s already programmed in. Call if you need more time.”

It was a little hard to keep a straight face at the look of disbelief Song gave him, but Clint managed. 

“You’re letting me go on my own?”

“Yeah. You’re okay with that, right?’ Song just nodded. “You can find what you need in an hour and a half?” Another nod. “Good. Get going. I’ll meet you for lunch.”

Song didn’t have to be told twice. Clint watched her disappear around a corner, heading for the east end of the mall. 

Coulson would shit a brick when he found out about this, but Clint would jump off that bridge when he got to it. The bottom line was that Song didn’t really trust them and they didn’t really trust her, and if that was ever going to change, someone had to make the first overture. 

Ninety minutes of freedom seemed like a decent start.

On the other hand, Clint wasn’t an idiot. When Song was out of sight he quickly ducked into the nearest store, made a couple of quick purchases so that he’d have a bag to carry around, and strolled down toward the east end of the mall himself.

He didn’t watch her the whole time. They _did_ have to learn to trust Song out of their sight. But Clint swung by often enough to be sure that she wasn’t going to try to make a run for it. Song was none the wiser. She might be an incredible operative—they were only starting to get an inkling of just how incredible—but he was Hawkeye and this was his home turf. Watching people without being seen was one of his specialties.

She spent most of her allotted time in one of the large department stores. Unsurprisingly, Song did her shopping as efficiently as she did everything else. She did, though, appear to have girlier taste than Clint would have expected. From there she visited a bath products store (Clint watching her progress from one of the second floor walkways) and then spent a good ten minutes just wandering through the Christmas displays set up in the main concourse before ducking into the bookstore. 

Clint was waiting at a table in the food court when she arrived, five minutes past deadline.

“Sorry,” she said, dropping her bags in the curve of the booth’s seat. “There was a line.”

“No worries,” Clint said as she sat down across from him. “Hungry?”

She gave a small, noncommittal shrug that Clint chose to interpret as yes.

“Okay, the Italian place, the sandwich place, and the Mexican place are solidly good. The Chinese place with the panda is okay, but the one with the dragon is hit-or-miss. The Greek place is mediocre and the chicken place has given Phil food poisoning twice.”

Song raised an eyebrow. “Twice?”

“Yeah, well, that’s Phil.” Clint grinned. “He doesn’t give up on things easily.”

“I’m sure that I’m meant to find some sort of deep allegorical double meaning in that statement, aren’t I?”

“Only if you’re bored.” Clint jerked his head toward the food stations. “You go first. I’ll watch the stuff.”

Song nodded, getting up again, but she paused for just a second. “Thank you,” she said neutrally, not quite making eye contact, before going on to get her lunch.

All in all, it seemed to be a successful first field trip. Coulson still called Clint on the carpet for it that evening when he found out that Song had been taken off the base.

“What the _hell_ were you thinking?”

It was enough to make Clint remember his own rookie days. He’d heard that question a lot back then.

Okay, he _still_ heard that question on a fairly routine basis.

“I was thinking that she’s been stuck on this base for two and a half months and needed some stuff that she couldn’t get at the PX, so I took care of it,” he said.

“By taking her to a mall? Without clearing it with me?” Coulson looked as if his hairline was going to give another inch or so at any second. “And then letting her go off by herself?”

“Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going to hang over her shoulder while she picked out her bras.” Clint would just as soon leave _creepy pervert_ off his resume, thank you very much. “Jesus, Phil. Fury made me an approved escort, so I escorted. From a distance. It’s fine. She’s back in her quarters. No one died.”

Coulson sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, leaving it pressed into his palms for a moment.

“Okay,” he said, voice muffled. Coulson dropped his hands again. “I get that you believe in this girl, Clint. I have no idea _why_ you do, but I get that you do. And I want to think that she can turn herself around, but we need to be realistic. We can’t ignore what she’s capable of. She’s the Reaper.” 

“She’s a person.” Clint folded his arms stubbornly. “And you believe in her, too. If you didn’t you wouldn’t have let me take her out of Sofia alive. You also wouldn’t have the three trainees who refused to room with her on your shit list. Yeah, I know about that,” Clint said when Coulson raised his eyebrows. “You wouldn’t be spending your time chasing down every scrap of information you can find on her. 

“And she _can_ turn this around, but only if we start treating her more like a recruit and less like a prisoner. Otherwise, why the hell should she want to?”

Coulson looked like he was about to argue, but checked himself.

“All right. I’m not going to say that you don’t have valid points,” he said. “I think it’s better to proceed with more caution, but you’re right. She didn’t run and no one died.” Coulson smiled slightly. “It’s a good start.”

“She’ll get even better, Phil. Just watch.”


	3. Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> River could count on one hand the number of times she’d slept in close proximity to another person since she’d struck out on her own.

_Spring 2006_

River could count on one hand the number of times she’d slept in close proximity to another person since she’d struck out on her own.

It was basic survival instinct. A sleeping person was vulnerable in far too many ways. That was not to say that River never had company: a mark, a temporary comrade-in-arms, a man that she’d taken to bed, or some combination thereof. But she always remained awake until she was alone again. Sleep was a solitary exercise. 

It wasn’t really an issue until SHIELD.

At first River had thought that SHIELD would mean surviving on stolen catnaps. As a new recruit, she’d been assigned to cramped quarters with three other trainees. Fortunately, her roommates had quickly decided that they’d rather not bunk with a known killer and had protested to the lead trainer. Coulson had had to find River a private corner elsewhere in the barracks. River had finally been able to sleep, and when her nightmares came calling (as they inevitably did) she was spared the shame of having anyone witness it.

But there were still times when privacy was simply not an option.

River lay awake in a dark bunk room listening to rain pound down on the roof of the tiny cabin. They were in the Appalachian Mountains on a training exercise, and the weather had run the gamut from chilly grey mists to downpours for the past three days. River was _tired_. She had been up at dawn, running through the woods and climbing rocks, and her body was heavy with fatigue. Her cot was reasonably comfortable, she had plenty of blankets, and her weapons were safely within reach.

She couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t been able to do more than lightly doze for the last couple of nights. The two reasons were sound asleep on their own respective cots a few feet away. Barton and Coulson had been dead to the world for hours, and River thought she might actually hate them a little bit.

River rolled over, punching her pillow. Her body was fighting sleep out of habit, not because she actually thought that Barton or Coulson planned to kill her while her guard was down. _You’re stuck with them for the time being, so you might as well get accustomed to it. You have a partner and a handler whether you like it or not, and you can’t go without sleep in the field._

She resolutely closed her eyes, focused on the sound of the rain, and eventually managed to drift off.

As bad luck would have it, one of her nightmares was waiting to meet her.

River couldn’t even say which of her monsters it was that came calling on her that night. All she knew was that one moment she was settling into an uneasy slumber, and the next moment she was being torn out of it again, fighting herself free of her blankets in a panic. She wanted to run from whatever it was, but when she moved to throw herself off of her cot she collided with something.

“Whoa, whoa, _whoa_. Easy!” 

A pair of arms circled her, preventing another attempt at flight. That should have made matters worse. Still, while River’s confused mind couldn’t put a name to the person invading her space, some instinct recognized it as a presence that was familiar and meant _safety_. So instead of going on the attack, she latched onto it, fingers gripping so hard that she heard a slight hiss of pain.

Her eyes were still clenched shut, but she could hear a faint shuffling sound and a second voice. “Is she okay?”

“I don’t think she’s even awake,” the first voice replied.

_Barton_ replied. River knew who it was, of course, but her brain was shying away from actual names. Once she acknowledged names she’d also have to acknowledge that she was holding onto Barton like her life depended on it, and at that point she might actually die of embarrassment.

Besides that, River really was only half awake. Sleep was still circling, trying to tug her under again. Given a choice between actually waking up and facing her teammates or giving in to sleep and facing more of her demons, River chose the latter. 

The next thing she knew it was morning.

_Late_ morning, much later than she should have been lying abed. It was past 0900 by her inner clock. River frowned. It was still raining and what passed for sunlight coming through the window was thin and dull. The other two cots were empty. She could hear quiet conversation coming from the cabin’s main room.

She felt rested, but with an odd edge of unease that she couldn’t immediately place. Then her memory caught up and River flopped over onto her stomach and buried her face in her pillow to muffle a groan.

She’d had a midnight freak-out. In front of Barton and Coulson. Honestly, how buggered could her luck get? Maybe if she stayed face-down long enough she could smother herself to death.

The odds seemed unlikely. River pushed herself up and out of bed. She reminded herself that there were no actual documented cases of a person dying of humiliation. So she’d had a nightmare in front of her teammates. She could hardly be the first SHIELD agent who had ever done that. She probably wasn’t even the first to have ever clung to her partner like a barnacle. 

River could hear Barton and Coulson talking quietly out in the main room. She opened the door of the bunk room, bracing herself for overly solicitous concern or broad hints that she should go back to weekly visits to the Psych department.

Barton was standing on one side of the room, throwing small knives at the rough target hanging on the opposite wall. Given that this was Hawkeye, with his preternatural aim, he seemed to be writing out his initials rather than simply aiming for the bulls eye. Coulson was stretched out on the cabin’s old sofa reading a book. Both looked up from their respective activities when River stepped out of the bunkroom. 

“Hey. We didn’t wake you up, did we?” Barton asked, setting aside his knives.

“No,” River said. “Which does rather beg the question, why didn’t you? It’s late. Don’t we have training?”

“Not today.” Coulson laid his book down. “Word came over the horn this morning. The area is under a flash flood watch. We’re safe where we are, but we’ll stay holed up for the day.”

River wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. Training, at least, would have been a distraction from what she feared might become a litany of intrusive questions: _How did you sleep? Are you having trouble? What did you dream about last night? Do you want to talk about it?_

But to her cautious surprise, not one word was said about what had happened the night before. River spent most of the day curled up in a chair. She alternated between committing SHIELD codes to memory and reading the paperback novel she’d brought along until Barton appeared at her elbow with a deck of cards and a hopeful expression. Coulson consented to join in only when they gave up crazy eights for poker.

River started to wonder if perhaps everything that had happened the night before had been a dream. She wasn’t really given to fooling herself for the sake of her own comfort, though. She knew that it had been real.

Somehow, though she couldn’t explain quite why, that knowledge that let her close her eyes easily that night.


	4. Under The Influence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even the best SHIELD agent isn't always at 100%. When that happens, it's always good to have a friend who will watch your back.

_January 2007_   
_Elko, Nevada_

The Hermitage Motor Lodge had some of the most hideous drapes River had ever seen. Top five, at least. Possibly even top three. A Dalek with a head cold might sneeze a prettier pattern. Six glasses of whiskey hadn’t made them any prettier.

Or was it seven glasses? Or five? Or eight? River frowned, trying to recall, then shrugged. It didn’t particularly matter. She had started on the bottle with the goal of dulling her memory. She couldn’t really complain about the fact that she’d succeeded.

River finished off the last of the alcohol in her glass and attempted to ignore the knocking at her door.

It had not been a good day to be left alone with her thoughts. River knew that Clint and Coulson had meant well when they’d told her to stay put and rest while they rode herd on what was left of this operation. _This time yesterday you were still in the hospital,_ Coulson had told her that morning. _Don’t overdo it. We’re in clean-up phase at this point. You’re off duty today. Stay here and take it easy. That’s an order._

River had tried to protest, but she’d been outvoted. Clint had taken Coulson’s side. _Moretti and her team are setting up shop down the hall to start going through all the computer files. Ask one of them if you want anything._

Really, you got exposed to an experimental hallucinogen and spent one day in the grip of violent delusions, and everybody had to make a fuss.

The last thing River had been in the mood for was being babysat by the data analysts. There had been only one thing she’d wanted and it had been easily attained by slipping some “incentive” to the hotel’s desk clerk. Getting good and drunk wasn’t something that she did often (a drunk person was easier to kill) but this situation was safe enough.

Hell, she was _off duty,_ even if it was under protest. 

Granted, she was far from being at 100% (even without factoring in the whisky) and it wasn’t as if River was needed in the field at this point. The real action had gone down two days ago. Strike Team Delta had led an assault on a warehouse outside of town where an illicit group had set up a chemical weapons factory. 

During the course of the attack, one of those weapons had been turned on River.

River had to give the bad guys credit: one spray of their drug and her brain had dredged up everything she’d ever hated or been terrified of and amped it up into an IMAX 3-D psychedelic extravaganza. The things she’d seen hadn’t been pretty. 

What she’d done to Clint and Coulson as a result had been even less pretty. According to the accounts she’d overheard, River had done her level best to tear her partner and her S.O. apart.

In spite of her best efforts, River couldn’t forget that.

The knocking started up again and River suppressed a groan, dropping her head back in exasperation. Clint was back from the field and, in true Clint-like fashion, was determined to check on her. He should be getting some dinner or some rest, but no. Apparently camping outside of her room was a better use of his time. 

He was probably wearing that hangdog look he got when he was worried, too. River had never told him so, but she found that look oddly endearing.

She frowned to herself. That was a rather odd thought, wasn’t it?

“River!” And now he was using Authoritative Voice. “If you don’t open this door right now, I’m going to break the damn thing down, and I’ll tell Phil he can take it out of your pay, not mine. Come on. Open up.”

Oh, for the love of God.

River got up from the small table. She had to catch herself on the back of her chair for a moment before she walked an unsteady path to the door. She undid the deadbolt with a sharp click and turned to retrace her steps back to her starting point.

Clint must have had his hand right on the knob. “Shit, River, are you trying to freak me out?” he said, coming in behind her and closing the door. “Why didn’t you answer? I thought something was wrong.”

River looked back at him. Clint was still moving stiffly, she noticed. If his body looked anything like hers did today, he was a mass of bruises. She could also see the bandage around his wrist, peeking out from the cuff of his jacket. (Apparently she’d managed to get her teeth into him, too.) Coulson was sporting a similar set of injuries. Both men had taken a beating from her in that warehouse. Fortunately for all of them, drugs and panic had made her a sloppy fighter. Clint and Coulson had been able to wrestle her to the ground and let her fight herself into an exhausted, shaking ball of reluctant compliance that they could safely transport to the hospital. 

River had heard one of the strike team members give an animated description of the fight to a couple of the data analysts. She wished she hadn’t eavesdropped.

“River?” Clint said again. Right. He was waiting for an answer. “What the hell were you doing in here?” 

“I was following orders,” she replied. River could hear the exaggerated note of primness in her voice. “Resting. Staying out of the way.” She went to reclaim her chair. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Her attempt at dignity was rather scuttled when she nearly missed the seat. And, of course, Clint was right there like he had bloody teleported across the room to keep her from falling into the floor.

His eyes immediately landed on the bottle and glass on the table. River hadn’t gone to any trouble to hide them. Still using one hand to steady her, Clint picked up the bottle, eyeing what was left in the bottom. 

“How full was this when you started?” he asked mildly.

River shrugged. “Full?”

“Jesus, River.” Clint leaned down close to her face. Yes, indeed. There was the Hangdog Look of Worry. “You’re completely wasted, aren’t you?”

She almost wanted to reach up and tweak his nose. Instead she just smiled wryly. “That was rather the idea.”

Clint reached back and pulled the other chair around, sitting so that he was directly in front of her. “You want to tell me why?”

River just stared blankly at him for several moments. She wasn’t sure how to answer, wasn’t sure how to explain how this bad day was somehow worse than other bad days. 

The hallucinations had been horrific. They had dredged a lot of half-buried fears and bad memories up to the surface. She couldn’t explain that, though, because she’d lied and told Clint and Coulson that she didn’t remember any of it. Guilt was eating at her for having hurt her two closest friends. She’d already tried to apologize to Clint and Coulson for what she’d done, but neither one of them would allow her to. They’d just told her it hadn’t been her fault. She’d been compromised, not herself. As if that should make her feel better.

She didn’t have the fortitude for an honest explanation and she was entirely too drunk to come up with a line of bullshit. Instead, River just smiled.

“You look like a very solemn puppy when you go all serious. Has anyone ever told you that?”

She saw the ghost of a smile cross his face before Clint shook his head and got up. “Yeah, okay. Come on, Talon,” he said, putting his hands under her arms and lifting her up onto her feet. “Let’s get you into bed.”

“Careful there, soldier. The fraternization regs might hear you.”

It was like the whiskey was hitting all at once. Clint had to hold her up and help her over to her bed. The maneuver had all the grace of a pair of eleven-year-olds attempting their first slow dance. 

“You know,” Clint said as he steered her along, “I’m not going to tell you that you can’t drink, but a bottle of booze on top of experimental drugs probably isn’t such a bright idea. Unless you’re trying to kill yourself or something.”

River shook her head, or tried to. Her face was mashed a little too tightly against Clint’s chest to move. She could chuckle, though. “No. I tried that once, but it didn’t take.”

Fucking regeneration.

It was only when Clint froze that it occurred to River that maybe she shouldn’t have said that aloud. Her tongue was a little looser than she’d thought it was. But after a second, River just felt Clint sigh and his hand briefly came up to rest on the back of her head. 

“Come on,” he said quietly, moving her along again.

By the time Clint tucked her up into bed, River was half asleep. Her partner apparently wasn’t ready to surrender watchdog duty, though. Clint killed all but one lamp and stretched out beside her on top of the blankets, propping himself up against the headboard. River heard a faint electronic pop as he turned on the TV and a murmur of voices before he muted the device. 

She should tell him to go get some dinner or some sleep, or something, but she wasn’t going to.

“Hey, Clint?”

“Yeah?” 

“That thing I told you I tried to do once? I’m really glad it didn’t take.”

She felt Clint shift and he scruffed his fingers lightly through her hair. “I’m glad it didn’t take, too.”

“That’s because you’re a good person.”

“Yeah.” Clint sounded a little amused. “That’s me. Saint Clint. I won’t even give you a hard time when you’re sick as a dog from this tomorrow.”

True to his word, Clint didn’t. He even fed Coulson a story about food poisoning the next morning, though River had her doubts about whether Coulson actually believed it.

“So, was it worth it?” Clint asked, passing River yet another bottle of water.

River grudgingly accepted the bottle. She had made a nest for herself under the towel rack in her dark bathroom and had no plans to move for anything short of a fire sweeping through the building.

“Oh, yeah,” she said with as much sarcasm as she could muster. “I’m thinking of making it a weekly thing.”

Clint saluted her with his mug of coffee. “Cool. I’ll look forward to kicking your ass in training every day.”

River rolled her eyes at him. Clint was standing silhouetted in the bathroom doorway, his shoulder resting against the jamb.

“Remind me to be properly sympathetic when you get good and drunk,” she said. 

“Don’t hold your breath waiting,” Clint said. “I’ve never been drunk.” River must have looked surprised because he shrugged and continued, “I don’t like not being in control of my faculties. Shoot me.”

“Never?” River asked. Though now that she thought about it, no she’d never seen Clint drunk. She’d seen him drink. Pleasantly buzzed, yes. But never drunk.

“Never.” Clint looked slightly amused. “The closest I’ve gotten was the Green Pill Incident.”

“Green pills” was SHIELD shorthand for one of Medical’s harder-hitting pain killers. One of the first instructions Coulson had given River when she’d gone on active duty had been, “Barton doesn’t get the greens. It’s in his file, but if he’s hurt and you’re the one with him, it’s your job to remind the medics.”

“I never knew there was an _incident,_ ” River said.

“You mean Phil’s never told you why I’m not supposed to get them?”

River shook her head.

“Well,” Clint said, “there’s a story there.”

*****

_May 2000_  
 _New York_

It was a beautiful day. It was a _really_ beautiful day. It might be the most beautiful day Clint had ever seen.

He was sitting outside on a sunny patch of grass. God, it felt good to be out of tactical gear. Cotton scrubs were way more comfortable than body armor, no doubt about it. Maybe they should make this stuff standard issue.

“Clint?”

The voice was coming from a distance, but was easily recognizable. Coulson. That was Coulson. He must have come outside too. That was good. It felt like they didn’t get many chances to just enjoy pretty days. They ought to do that more. It was like a field day. Or recess.

“Clint, where are you?”

Clint felt _great_. It felt like. . .like being back with the circus again. Clint had been a marksman, _The World’s Greatest Marksman._ But he’d been friends with acrobats and knew his way around a trapeze. What he felt right now was like that wonderful sensation of flipping off the bar and hanging in midair before landing in the net. It was awesome. Clint hadn’t even realized that he’d missed it. 

“Clint!” Clint opened his eyes and saw Coulson come jogging around the corner of the building. “Jesus Christ, kid. What are you doing out here?”

Clint broke into a broad grin at the sight of his supervising officer. “Phil! Hey. Have you seen this hedge?”

Coulson put on the brakes and stood over Clint, looking worried. He glanced at the hedge, the one Clint had been contemplating before he’d closed his eyes to just enjoy the sun. 

“The hedge?” Coulson asked.

“Yeah. I think this might be the most awesome hedge ever.” Clint reached out to run one hand through the leaves. “It’s all. . .green.”

Coulson squatted down beside him. Clint really didn’t know why he looked so worried. “It’s a great hedge,” Coulson said. “Clint, you need to be back in Medical.”

“Why?” Clint pulled his attention away from the very green hedge. “I feel fine. They gave me these painkillers. Do you know about these things? They’re green. Like the hedge. Green shit is awesome.”

“Yeah, I know about those painkillers.” It sounded to Clint like Coulson was being the tiniest bit sarcastic. “You seem to be experiencing one of their rarer side effects. We’ll have to put a note in your file.”

“I don’t know about side effects, but they’re _great_. I don’t feel a thing,” Clint said. “Did you know I got stabbed? Right here. Thirty stitches.” Clint pushed up his scrub shirt, exposing the patch of bandages that covered the wound on his abdomen. It had hurt like a bitch when it had happened. “Don’t even feel it.”

“I know about it. I was there, remember?” Coulson said, pulling Clint’s shirt back down. He slid his arms around Clint, easing him back up to his feet. “Come on. You need to go back to Medical.”

“Smells funny in there,” Clint muttered.

“I know,” Coulson said, slowly guiding him back toward the building. “I’ll tell you what. Come in and rest for a while and later we can come out and visit the hedge again. Okay?”

“Okay,” Clint said, leaning heavily against Coulson. “Hey, Phil? You’re my best friend, you know that?”

Coulson patted his shoulder. “Yeah, kid. You’re my best friend, too. Let’s get you inside.”

It _did_ smell weird in Medical, but it didn’t bug Clint too much. Nothing was bugging Clint much at the moment. He let the doctors get him settled back into bed. Coulson stayed this time, pulling a chair up beside him. “To keep an eye on you,” he said.

The ceiling of his infirmary room wasn’t as interesting as the hedge, but Clint could follow old faint paths that brushes had left in the paint. It was soothing. He watched the paint swirl for a while, thinking.

“Hey, Phil?” Clint said. “Have you ever tried internet dating?”

There was a very long silence from his handler. “Why do you ask?” Coulson replied.

“I think you should try it,” Clint said, following a particularly long swoop in the paint.

“And why is that?” Coulson sounded as if he was a little afraid of hearing Clint’s reasoning.

“Because you’re getting old.” Coulson was going to be thirty-five this year. That was officially _late thirties_. “And if you lose any more hair, no one’s going to have you.”

Coulson made a weird noise that was somewhere between a cough and a laugh.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to assume that’s the drugs talking. Is there a particular reason why you’re suddenly worrying about my social life?”

Clint rolled his head on his pillow so that he could see Coulson. “Because you’re my best friend. I want you to be happy.”

Coulson went from looking mildly insulted to a bit touched. “Well, thanks, kid. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’m not suffering for company.”

Right. In the not-quite-a-year Clint had been with SHIELD, that was one of the more surprising things he had learned. It seemed like Coulson had hooked up with half the women on base at one time or another. 

Well, okay, probably not _that_ many, but quite a few. Coulson was a gentleman, so he had refused to give Clint the exact number, but he had mentioned a few names. 

Clint hadn’t been able to look Kaye, his favorite base librarian, in the eye for a week.

“You’ve had a girlfriend, though, right?” Clint asked, going back to watching the paint swirl across the ceiling. “I mean, not a girl. A girlfriend.”

“Sure.” Coulson said, sounding distinctly bemused. “Why do you want to know?”

“Best friend. S’sorta stuff friends talk about.”

“Okay.” Clint got the distinct impression Coulson was humoring him. “Yeah, I’ve had girlfriends. There was one girl I dated, on and off, almost all the way through college.”

“What was she like?”

Coulson didn’t answer right away. “She was smart. Really, really smart,” he said at last. “Nice. She was just a good person. Charming. Didn’t take any crap, but in that well-brought-up-Southern-girl way.”

“She pretty?”

“Oh, yeah.” Coulson smiled. 

“What was her name?”

Again, it took Coulson a few moments to respond. “Valerie. Her name was Valerie.”

Clint caught his eyes drifting closed and determinedly blinked them open again.

“So, what happened?” he asked.

“I graduated.” Coulson shrugged. “I was going into the Army. She had a year of college still to go. We broke up.”

Clint frowned. He felt his buzz dull a bit. “That’s sad.”

“It’s what happens. We were really young.” Coulson raised his eyebrows and continued dryly, “When you’re a bit older and wiser and legally able to buy beer, you’ll understand.”

“Yeah.” Clint pondered that for a moment. “I never really had a girlfriend,” he added.

“No?” Coulson said. 

“No. I mean, girls, yeah. Not a girlfriend.” That was accurate, wasn’t it? “Closest I ever got was Pam. Had a thing with her for a little while.”

“Who was Pam?” Coulson asked.

“She was a fortune teller. At Carson’s Carnival.” She still was, as far as Clint knew. “Madame Paloma, that was what she called herself. Sounded better on a fortune teller than _Pam_.”

“And what was Pam like?”

“She was nice.” When Clint bothered to remember Pam, it was generally fondly. “Always smelled good.”

“Always a bonus.” Coulson sounded amused again. “Obviously things didn’t work out there.”

“Nah,” Clint said. “I knew they wouldn’t, though. Pam, she fooled around with _everybody_. Hell, she had a thing with Barney before she had one with me. I think that was one of the reasons he got as pissed off with me as he did.”

“Barney, your older brother?” Coulson asked. “How old exactly was this girl?”

“I dunno. Thirty. . .something.”

Coulson was starting to sound a little less amused. “And how old were you?”

“Sixteen.” Clint had to force his eyes open to look at Coulson. “I guess that was kind of fucked up, wasn’t it? I didn’t think so then.” Clint smiled lopsidedly. “I mean, hell. Sixteen, right?”

In Clint’s experience, most sixteen year old boys didn’t complain about getting to have sex. He had been no exception.

“But looking back,” he said, “I guess it was kind of fucked up.”

“Well, certainly on her part,” Coulson said. “Maybe you should give it a try again someday.”

Clint frowned. “Fooling around with Pam?”

Coulson looked like he had a headache coming on. “Seeing someone. Having a girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Yeah, that did make a little more sense. “Do you think I should?”

“I don’t think you shouldn’t.” Coulson had kind of a funny look on his face, Clint thought. “You’re young. That might be the sort of thing you’ll want to figure out how to work into your life at some point. Just because you belong to SHIELD doesn’t mean you can’t have anything outside of it.”

“But you don’t.”

“Well, like you said, I’m old and probably beyond help.” Coulson smiled. “Think about it, assuming that you remember anything about this conversation when you wake up.”

Clint attempted to pry his eyes open again, but it was clearly a losing battle. The pleasant, high-flying buzz was settling into something quieter and calmer. “Yeah, I think I’ll be awake later,” he mumbled.

“You do that, Clint.”

*****

_February 2003_  
 _Arlington, Virginia_

When Coulson had arrived at Valerie’s house he’d automatically gone straight to the kitchen.

Valerie’s kitchen was the heart of her house. Between the time they’d parted ways after his college graduation and the time they’d reconnected six years ago she’d learned to cook. (She’d learned to cook in roughly the same way Mozart had learned to compose music in Coulson’s opinion.) Her kitchen was large and comfortable and stocked with implements he couldn’t even begin to guess the uses of. It was a room that felt very, very safe, even now when it was dark and quiet and he was the only one in the house.

He really shouldn’t be here right now.

He was supposed to get to Arlington around six o’clock. A chance had come up for Coulson to get out of New York earlier than he’d anticipated, though, and he had jumped at it. It had been close to six months since he’d been away from SHIELD headquarters and all he’d wanted was to just get the hell out.

“That’s fine,” Valerie had said when he’d called to discuss the change in plans with her. “I’ll still be at work when you get there, but you can let yourself in.” She’d sounded faintly amused. “I know you don’t have a key, but I’m betting you can work your way around that.”

Coulson had assured her that it wouldn’t be a problem, and it hadn’t been.

If he and Valerie were going to keep seeing each other, he reflected, he really ought to do something about beefing up her home security.

Coulson focused very deliberately and poured another few fingers’ worth of scotch into his glass. He’d been sitting at the kitchen table, repeating this motion over and over since he’d arrived. He’d only meant to have one, just something to relax him. Relaxation had been in very short supply lately. 

Once he’d started, though, he’d just kept going.

Getting plastered wasn’t something that Coulson made a habit of. The simple fact of the matter was that he couldn’t do it often, even if he’d wanted to. He had too many responsibilities. There were too many people who looked to him for leadership these days. 

This, though, was one of those rare occasions where he was 100% off duty. It was an even rarer occasion in that he was in a place where he felt safe enough to let his guard down.

Coulson’s thoughts (such as they were) were interrupted by a faint whine. He looked down at his lap. “What’s wrong, boy?”

Jackson was sitting beside his chair, his chin resting on Coulson’s knee. The dog looked as worried as it was possible for an overgrown puppy to look. Coulson reached down and rubbed his ears.

“Got to tell you, buddy, I could have used you on base these last few months,” he said. “You remember Clint? The guy you used to know as _mom_? He’s been through a pretty rough time.” Coulson drained the rest of his glass. “He put _me_ through a pretty rough time. You probably would have cheered him up.”

Jackson _woofed_ slightly.

“Oh, he’s okay now,” Coulson said. “He’ll be fine. It was just a shitty few months, that’s all.”

The shit had kicked off not long after Coulson had delivered Jackson to Valerie back during the summer. He and Clint had been sent down to Argentina on a mission that had ultimately blown up in their faces. 

In Clint’s case, quite literally.

Clint had gotten into a tight spot. He’d been made and grabbed, and had been unable to immediately fight back against his captors. Coulson had heard the whole thing over the comm while he’d followed protocol, holding back and waiting for reinforcements. It was one of the worst things about being an S.O., that particular feeling of helplessness that came from monitoring the situation, but not being able to go straight in and help.

His resolve had lasted up to the point that a huge burst of feedback had come over the comm and then dead silence. At that point Coulson had decided that protocol could go fuck itself and had gone after his agent.

He’d found Clint, disoriented and bleeding, stumbling down an alleyway. Clint had stared at him blankly when Coulson had demanded to know what had happened, where he was hurt. At first Coulson had suspected a concussion, but the truth had quickly become apparent.

Clint couldn’t hear.

Back at Headquarters, Coulson had been able to get the full story. Clint had been able to keep his hands on one of his arrowheads, one equipped to deliver a powerful sonic blast, and had set it off at an opportune moment. It had saved his life. The downside was that it had screwed his ears, but Coulson hadn’t been worried. As soon as they stopped ringing they should have been fine, right?

He hadn’t really grasped how bad things were until a few weeks later when the doctors had done yet another evaluation of Clint’s hearing and shaken their heads.

Most of Clint’s hearing was gone and the loss was permanent.

Clint hadn’t taken it well. Coulson had been seriously concerned about his mental health for a few months.

Things had worked out, though. They owed R&D big time. Clint’s ears were never going to heal, but thanks to the techs he was now outfitted with hearing aids that would let him live and work normally. Now that he wasn’t waiting for SHIELD to declare him dead weight and dump him, Clint had started to crawl out of the angry, depressed hole he’d been in since the doctors had delivered their bad news. Which meant that Coulson could breathe easier and stop worrying that Clint was going to take off in the middle of the night and wind up dead under a bridge somewhere.

Six months was a long time to be on high alert.

As it was, Clint was expected to be returned to the active duty roster next month.

If it hadn’t been for Clint’s injury, they both might have died in Tirana last week. Sometimes the universe had a fucking sadistic sense of humor.

So, here Coulson was, drinking alone in a dark kitchen in Arlington with a dog.

Jackson suddenly pulled his head out from under Coulson’s hand, ears standing at attention, then got up and padded out of the kitchen. A second later, Coulson heard someone come in the front door.

“Hello?” he heard Valerie call. “Phil?”

“Out here.”

“Hey!” Coulson could hear Valerie’s footsteps turn toward the kitchen. Quiet ones, she’d probably kicked her heels off at the door. “Sorry I’m late. I stopped off to get a key made for you. I don’t want you to have to break and enter when you’re off the clock.”

She came into the kitchen, Jackson following along behind her. Valerie dropped her purse and keys on the counter. “Why are you sitting in the dark?” she asked, turning on the overhead lights.

“Fuck.” Coulson automatically lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sudden glare.

Valerie was quiet for a moment. Coulson didn’t need to see to know what look she had on her face. He heard Jackson whine again, louder and more insistently.

“Okay,” Valerie said slowly. “Jackson, come on. You need to go outside for a little while.”

Valerie let Jackson out into the backyard, then came back and perched on the edge of the table by Coulson. 

Coulson attempted to smile up at Valerie. It was practically a reflex, smiling at the sight of Valerie. It had been that way since the day he’d met her. She was and always had been the most appealing woman he’d ever seen. Not stereotypically beautiful, but incredibly appealing. She was neat and trim and came up to his nose. She had very dark hair and big dark eyes, all the more expressive for the faint laugh lines that had started to form around them over the last few years.

At this moment, that expression was mildly concerned, but not shocked. Valerie had never gone in much for histrionics, a couple of their more dramatic college break-ups aside. 

“How’s it going there, Phil?” she asked.

“It’s been a rough. . .something,” he replied.

Valerie just nodded. Of course she wasn’t shocked by this, Coulson thought. She had known him since he was nineteen years old. She had seen him at some of the great highs and lows of his life, and at a myriad of points in between, including drunk off his ass.

He sometimes wondered what might have happened if he and Valerie hadn’t split up when he’d graduated. It had seemed like the only logical thing to do back then. He had been going into the Army and she’d had another year of college. Maintaining their relationship long-distance hadn’t seemed feasible. They had sucked at long-distance back then.

Even if those circumstances hadn’t been in play, though, Coulson had never, in their three years of on-and-off dating, quite shaken the belief that Valerie was too far out of his league. He had never quite been able to wrap his head around what a gorgeous girl from an old South, old money family had seen in a working-class kid from Pittsburg in the first place. 

Even Coulson’s mother had tried to caution him on the subject. He remembered that it was one of the last serious conversations she’d tried to have with him, the Christmas before she’d died. She had tried to say to him, as kindly as possible, _Girls like her don’t marry boys like you_. He had brushed off her concern then, but had never quite forgotten it.

He and Valerie had gone their separate ways almost fifteen years ago. He’d joined the Army, gone to the Gulf, then been recruited by SHIELD. Valerie had gone to grad school, gotten married, and then divorced. Six years ago, they had run into each other in Miami, of all places. He’d been finishing up a job. She had been there on vacation. 

It turned out they remembered each other very fondly, and they’d been seeing each other casually ever since. He stopped over when he was in the DC area. She visited him when she was in New York. Age and maturity had worked a few wonders on their ability to maintain a relationship, even if it was a fairly loose one.

“Phil?” Valerie’s brow was now a bit furrowed. He wondered how long he had been sitting, letting his mind wander. “What is it? Is it your kid? I thought he was doing better.”

Coulson smiled. Sometime over the last few months, Valerie had started referring to Clint as his “kid.” It looked like it was going to stick.

Well, why not? Clint was probably the closest thing he was ever going to have.

“He is,” Coulson said. “He’s doing a lot better.”

During Clint’s rocky recovery, Coulson had found himself calling Valerie more and more just to talk. Somewhere, somehow, their relationship had started to go from old friends who casually hooked up to something deeper, not that Coulson could say exactly what that was. But he found that he could safely voice his worries and frustrations to her in a way that he couldn’t with anyone at SHIELD. At SHIELD he had to be calm, confident, and reassuring. 

“Phil.” Valerie rested one hand on the side of his face, steering his attention back somewhere in the vicinity of the track. Her voice was firmer, and Coulson recognized the tone that meant, _Honey, focus_. “Do you want to talk about what’s wrong?”

Coulson blew out a sharp breath. “God, yes,” he said. “But I can’t.”

What had happened in Tirana last week was strictly classified. That was what generally happened when missions went to hell as badly as that one had.

Three agents that Coulson had gone through SHIELD training with had been killed.

There was a good chance that Coulson and Clint would have been on that mission if Clint had been medically cleared for duty. If they had been there, maybe they could have saved the situation, prevented deaths. Maybe they would be dead themselves right now. Coulson had played scenario after scenario out in his head trying to figure out if he should feel guilt or gratitude over the fact that circumstances had conspired to keep him and Clint safe in New York.

Coming off of the last six months, it had been too much. Too hard to figure out. Getting drunk had seemed like a good alternative to running the probabilities again.

“Okay.” Valerie calmly moved the glass and bottle to the kitchen counter, then came back and tugged him sideways in his chair. “Come on. Get up.”

“What are we doing?” Coulson asked, even as he obediently rose to his feet. He was proud that he only swayed a little bit.

“We’re putting you to bed while you can still walk there,” Valerie replied. She raised what he recognized was a mock-stern eyebrow at him. “You’re not sleeping in my kitchen, Coulson.”

Valerie had always downplayed worry like that.

God, he hated making her worry.

Coulson wrapped his arms around Valerie, resting his forehead on her shoulder. “Sorry, Val.”

He felt her shake her head, felt her put her arms around him and pat him on the back. “You don’t have to apologize to me,” she said. “Besides, the hangover you’re going to have in the morning is going make you sorry enough. Now, come on.” Valerie gently pushed him upright again and began steering him toward the front hall and the stairs. “Bed. I can’t carry you.”

“Yeah.” Coulson let Valerie guide him along. “I can still carry you, though.”

Even after fifteen years. Coulson was a little smug about that.

He knew that Valerie was, too.

“Yes, you can. But not right now, because you’ll drop me,” she said as they started to carefully make their way up the stairs. “And in the morning I’m making you a batch of the Stuff.”

The Stuff: Valerie’s infamous hangover remedy. 

“I keep thinking I ought to get that recipe from you,” Coulson said. “It’d be really useful in interrogations. Except I don’t want to know what’s in it.”

The Stuff always did the trick, but _revolting_ didn’t begin to cover it.

“The secret is the pickle juice,” Valerie said.

“Seriously. Don’t want to know.”

“Suit yourself.” They had reached the second floor and Valerie turned him in the direction of her bedroom. Coulson thought he should protest, volunteer to take one of the spare rooms while he slept off his bender.

Only he really didn’t want to be alone.

“Sorry for fucking up the weekend,” he mumbled as Valerie sat him down on the side of the bed and started undoing layers of clothing.

“You haven’t fucked anything up,” Valerie replied, efficiently divesting him of his shirt. She had always been efficient at that, even when she’d been eighteen and they’d been crammed into the backseat of her VW Beetle. “And you’re taking it easy while you’re here. Let someone look after you for a change.”

Coulson smiled a little. That was Valerie all over. 

“You’re the best, Val.”

He saw the corner of Valerie’s mouth turn up, and she leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek. “And don’t you forget it, Phillip Coulson.”

“I never do.”


	5. The Best Weapons In The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Books have always been an important part of Clint Barton's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. No, I'm not dead! In fact, I've been writing quite diligently and laying up a lot of draft. I'm really excited about how stuff is shaping up. This is a little warm up before I get into what is promising to be a wild Phase 2 ride.
> 
> 2\. The title of this chapter is from the Doctor Who episode _Tooth & Claw:_
> 
> _"You want weapons? We're in a library! Books! Best weapons in the world."_
> 
> 3\. As always, a giant thank-you to my incredible beta, **like-a-raven**.

_A long time ago. . ._

Clint Barton’s childhood was filled with books.

Some of his strongest and earliest memories were tied to books. When he was a kid there had been regular bookstore excursions and weekly visits to the library. He could vividly remember being about three years old and tottering to the circulation desk with as many books as he could carry. 

Bedtime stories were a nightly ritual, one that he remembered his father and mother sharing in equally. The floor of his room had usually been littered with books. Board books and picture books. Alphabet books and number books. Books about little critters and big red dogs and curious monkeys and wild things. Clint even had an old photograph that his parents had taken of him passed out in the floor surrounded by books he’d gotten up to read in the middle of the night. It was one of the few childhood photos that survived all the shit that came later. 

One of the things he remembered about his mother was that she was rarely without a book of her own.

“The best thing about books,” she’d said once, “is that anyone’s life can be a book, because every person’s life is one long story.”

Clint used to think about that a lot when he was flopped on his bed reading about big red dogs and curious monkeys.

He wondered what kind of book his life might be.

*****

_June 1995_

“What the hell is this?” Barney asked, swiping the book out of Clint’s hands. 

“Give it back,” Clint said. He bit back a few more things he’d like to say. He wasn’t in the mood for a throw-down with his big brother today.

He was on his own time, damn it. Clint had practiced with his bow for two hours that morning and then taken care of his chores. Showtime wasn’t until later that evening, not that anyone was actually going to come out in weather as shitty as this. Carson’s Carnival had pulled into a field outside of Reeves, Oklahoma last night, just a few hours ahead of what looked like an endless stretch of rain.

Clint actually didn’t mind the pouring rain that much. Yeah, it was going to mean more peanut butter sandwiches and fewer hamburgers, not to mention short tempers among management until things picked back up. But, hell, he was fifteen. He liked an occasional lazy day. Clint had parked a folding chair under an awning outside of their camper and settled in to read.

“ _The Beekeeper’s Apprentice_.” Barney frowned at the book like another person might frown at a mysterious brown mass on the bottom of their shoe. “Where did you even get this?”

“I found it,” Clint said, half rising from his chair to swipe it back. 

The book might not be what he’d choose if he were choosing, but Clint wasn’t in a position to be picky. Bookstores and libraries had become things of the past. There wasn’t enough money to waste on things like new books and hitting a new town every week wasn’t conducive to getting a library card. Clint didn’t even like to visit libraries anymore. He had hated the way people looked at him when he was there, like he was just a shabby, disreputable, teenaged carnie who had wandered into the wrong building by mistake.

Clint found ways around it, though. He got books from discard piles, yard sales, and thrift stores. He found them abandoned in fast food restaurants, on park benches, and in stacks of recycling. On occasion, if the cover was tempting enough, he’d steal one.

It meant that he read a weird variety of stuff, fiction and nonfiction alike, but that was okay. School was a thing of the past too, so Clint figured he needed all the help he could get. His education might be spotty, but no one could say that it wasn’t broad.

Clint knew that Barney didn’t give a shit about books anymore. He thought they were a waste of time. Whenever his brother paid enough attention to comment on what Clint was doing, Clint always downplayed it as _Well, nothing better to do, is there?_

“Geek,” Barney said, but his tone was actually halfway affectionate. That affection was hit or miss these days. Sometimes Clint got the feeling that Barney didn’t give much of a shit about him anymore, either.

Barney cuffed Clint lightly across the head and moved on, ducking out from under the awning and heading down the row of parked campers and trucks. He was probably going to go pay Pam a visit.

Clint went back to his book.

*****

_August 1999_

Clint thought he was in trouble when Agent Coulson ended his one-man SHIELD protocol class early. 

“Barton, go ahead and put the manuals away and follow me, please.”

_This is it. This is the part where you get thrown out on your ass,_ Clint thought as he followed Coulson out of the training facility, across two quads, and into an administration building. He wasn’t sure what exactly he’d done wrong enough to get booted. Maybe he’d just accumulated enough fuck-ups in the two weeks he’d been here to warrant being cut loose.

He’d known it was bound to happen. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t even know what he was _doing_ here except that it beat military prison by a country mile.

When Coulson led him through a set of double doors at the end of a corridor, Clint halted like he’d hit a force field. What the hell was this?

Actually, it was pretty obvious what it was.

“A library?” Clint asked.

Agent Coulson had looked back to see what the hold-up was. He was wearing that annoying mild smile that Clint still didn’t quite know what to make of.

“I know it’s not huge, but the selection is pretty decent,” Coulson said. Clint just raised a disbelieving eyebrow; the library took up half of the floor of the building. “The librarians can also get in anything you might want to read. You just need to put in a request.”

As Coulson led the way into the library, Clint trailed along trying to look like he belonged there. 

“Ostensibly, the base libraries were established for agents to do research,” Coulson said. “But they’ve come to serve a broader purpose. The Psych Department determined that ready access to recreational reading materials was beneficial to morale. Given the sort of schedules we keep, base libraries can be more convenient than public libraries. You can check stuff out. Your ID badge serves as your library card.”

“Why are you showing me this?” Clint asked.

He was pretty sure his “surly teenager” was showing. He hadn’t said anything to anyone about books. He sure as hell hadn’t asked about a library. Clint didn’t like how Agent Coulson seemed to be able to peek into his brain like this. The inscrutable man in his neat suits seemed to have senses that damn near bordered on psychic sometimes. 

Coulson just shrugged.

“It tends to get missed in the initial wave of orientation,” he said. “Understandable. There’s a lot for new recruits to take in, and the library isn’t vital to the early stages of training. But I wanted you to know that it was here.” Coulson nodded a greeting to the two librarians behind the desk. “It’s open twenty-four hours a day,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “Nighttime’s usually pretty quiet.”

Clint mumbled something noncommittal in response and all but bolted when Coulson dismissed him to report to physical training.

Three days later he worked up the nerve to go back on his own. Remembering Coulson’s hint, he slipped into the library at two o’clock in the morning and was relieved to find the place largely deserted. He walked quickly past the circulation desk. The night librarian, a blonde woman probably a few years younger than Agent Coulson, greeted him with a friendly “hello,” but allowed him to pass without questioning or further conversation. Clint practically dove back into the stacks and stayed until dawn.

That fear of being cast out (of SHIELD and the library) passed, of course. Clint found his feet at SHIELD. The library became a favorite hang-out. Kaye, the librarian who had been manning the desk that first night, became a friend. She always made sure that Clint had a stack of stuff to read whenever he was laid up in Medical. And with steady access to books, Clint could usually find something to talk to his over-educated colleagues about if he needed to.

It felt good to belong again.

*****

_October 2003_

Books came along in other ways, too.

It took Clint a while to get used to the idea that he could buy books if he wanted to. No doubt about it, covert ops paid better than carnival work. Clint was sure there had been a mistake when he’d seen his first paycheck.

By Clint’s third anniversary with SHIELD, he was running out of room on the bookshelves in his quarters and the salespeople at local Barnes & Noble knew him by first name.

The place of honor on top of the bookcase was reserved for the books that Coulson gave him, everything from biographies to classics to fantasy novels. Coulson had a knack for picking good stuff. Clint’s entire Terry Pratchett phase could be pinned on him.

They had just wrapped a job in Canberra. Three SHIELD teams, three simultaneous surgical strikes across the city, and a volatile terrorist organization had been effectively beheaded. Clint’s part in the operation had been the most critical, but he’d executed it smoothly.

Five shots, five kills. All in a day’s work.

Clint could hear sirens approaching as he climbed down from the rooftop and got into the waiting car with Coulson. They were nonchalantly driving away as the police pulled up to the scene.

They rendezvoused with the other teams at the airfield. Given the number of agents involved, they were traveling by Bus (known more officially as an Airborne Mobile Command Station). All the comforts of home and conveniences of a base on one plane. Clint just wanted to get to his pod and crash. He felt beat. 

He had to run the congratulatory gauntlet first, though. Even Agent May had patted his back with a quiet “Good work” on her way to the cockpit. Clint breathed a sigh of relief as he shut the others out and flopped down on his bunk.

He needed a vacation.

Clint was not squeamish about his job. Maybe he should be. Maybe he should have more qualms about the fact that he killed for a living. Maybe the fact that he didn’t meant that there was something fundamentally wrong with him, but honestly Clint didn’t think so. SHIELD didn’t issue kill orders without reason and the agents who were sent to do the jobs were well aware of those reasons. He killed bad people in order to protect good people. He was cool with that.

All the same, there were occasionally days when his job description struck him as depressing as hell. Hiding on a roof and snuffing people’s lives out without so much as a second’s warning? What kind of person did that?

Clint ignored the broadcasted suggestion to buckle in for takeoff in favor of staying in his bunk. They had been in the air almost an hour when there was a tap on his door, right before Coulson slid it open.

“Are you okay?” Coulson asked.

“Sure,” Clint replied. “Just tired. Time zones and shit. You know?”

Coulson nodded. “Why don’t you come get something to eat?” he said.

“I’m not really hungry.” That made Coulson raise an eyebrow. Fine, so Clint was not exactly known for turning down food. “I’m good, Phil. I’ll get something later.”

“Okay.” Coulson took something from behind his back and leaned into the pod far enough to lay it on the edge of Clint’s bunk. “I picked that up for you this morning. It’s a long flight home. I thought you could use something new.”

Then he withdrew and slid the door closed again, leaving Clint alone.

Clint picked up the book. _Men at Arms_ by Terry Pratchett. Well, the cover was definitely interesting. He could see the edge of a post-it note sticking out of the pages like someone had marked their place. Weird, considering that the book looked brand new. Curious, Clint opened it to the makeshift marker. 

_Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat._

_They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar._

_So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word._

Clint read it over three times.

Leave it to Phil. Sometimes Clint thought that man actually _was_ psychic.

He’d thought he’d just sleep all the way back to the States, but he suddenly felt a lot less tired than he had been. Clint plumped his pillow up behind his back, made himself comfortable, flipped back to chapter one, and settled in to read.

*****

_September 2005_

Clint introduced Song to the library on her third day with SHIELD. 

She was still recovering. Dr. Levine was insisting on a week before the Reaper was put through physical assessments. There were still plenty of other evaluations to fill that week, but Clint could already see the young woman getting twitchy and antsy from lack of activity. Walking tours around the base were a good compromise.

The library was a logical place to start. It was one of Clint’s favorite places and, though he’d have been shocked if she showed it, he thought that Song would appreciate it. It hadn’t escaped his notice that the meager belongings she had been carrying on her when she’d been captured had included two paperback novels.

Clint smothered a smile as he watched Song take in the sight of the library. She looked more suspicious than usual, like she couldn’t figure out why she was being shown this. Had he looked like that the first time Coulson had brought him here?

Clint waved to Kaye and gave Song the basic run down. They didn’t stay long. They library was fairly busy at the moment and people were starting to stare. The Reaper was still a major and not-entirely-welcome novelty on the base.

“If you ever need anything, just ask Kaye,” Clint told Song as they walked on to their next stop on the tour. “She’s pretty awesome. She even got me a copy of the last _Harry Potter_ a week before its release date because I was going to be out of the country.”

Song had been largely silent and unresponsive today, but that, of all things, got a reaction.

“I’ll believe that SHIELD is secretly running the world,” she said, crossing her arms. “I’ll believe that it has its fingers in every major political pie and apparently has free rein to hunt down and kill whoever it chooses. But _no one_ can do that.”

Clint grinned. “Kaye can,” he said. “And she said she could get me the next one early. Be nice to her and I bet she’ll get one for you, too.”

Song just raised a skeptical eyebrow at him and didn’t say another word about the library.

It was only three days later that Clint ran into her in the stacks.

*****

_November 2006_

The bookstore in Brooklyn was more crowded than Clint had expected it to be. As authors went, Daniel Poam wasn’t exactly a household name. He was more of a fly-under-the-radar writer specializing in off-beat science fiction. Poam was a hometown boy, though, and he clearly had a cult following if the people in costume who had turned out for his talk and book signing were any indication.

He was also River’s favorite author. It had been a surprise to learn that his partner had such a geeky side to her personality, but a welcome one. Since settling in at SHIELD, she had started to slowly put a collection of the man’s books together (replacing, Clint assumed, a collection she’d had to leave behind somewhere). 

He had planned to drag River down here as a surprise, but instead she was stranded in Medical for a few days courtesy of their most recent mission. More on a whim than anything, Clint had quietly liberated one of her Poam novels from her quarters and come on his own. Being trapped in Medical sucked and he had a notion that this might cheer her up.

Clint stood in line for the signing between a robot in Victorian dress and some kind of bird-creature. It was kind of funny, he thought, how Daniel Poam himself was such an ordinary looking guy, especially in contrast to some of his fans. He was a thin, greying man in his fifties who looked more like a college professor than anything.

He greeted Clint with a friendly smile when it was his turn at the signing table.

“It’s actually for a friend of mine,” Clint said, handing over the book. “Would you mind making it out to her?”

“I’d be happy to,” Poam said, opening the book to the title page. “What’s her name?”

“River Song.”

“River Song?” Poam’s pen hovered over the page for just a second. “That’s an interesting name.”

“Yeah.” Clint grinned. “She’s an interesting person. She’s a big fan of yours. She couldn’t come herself, so this is kind of a surprise.”

“Well, she’s lucky to have such a good friend.” Poam scribbled a message in the book and handed it back to Clint. “I hope she can make it in person next time.”

Clint took the book to River in Medical as soon as he got back to base. She looked perplexed, then her eyes brightened when she saw the inner cover.

_“River--The most precious kind of family is the family that finds each other. D. Poam,”_ she read aloud.

“Yeah, I didn’t really get it,” Clint said. He had no idea how writers came up with stuff to write along with their autographs. It sounded good, that was probably the main thing.

“It’s a quote from the story,” River said, closing the book and resting it on her midsection. She shifted gingerly in what was probably a futile attempt to get comfortable. Clint sympathized. There was nothing like being in pain and not even being able to crash in your own bunk. “Maybe,” River added, “he was talking about you.”

“Yeah?” Clint knew he sounded a little surprised. “Is that what we are? Family?”

River shrugged, suddenly looking very interested in the cover of the book. “You’re the closest thing I have,” she said lightly. 

_What a difference a year makes._ Clint grinned broadly. Who would have thought, back in that safe house in Sofia, they’d ever be having a conversation like this?

River glanced up at him and pursed her lips against a smile of her own. “Shut up,” she said.

Clint laughed. If going all the way out to Brooklyn hadn’t been worth it already, it would definitely be worth it now.

*****

_July 2007_

Clint was on the range when the priority message came through on his phone. He’d been anticipating hearing something today, and sure enough there was a text from a secure SHIELD line.

_Never tickle a sleeping dragon._ The cryptic message was followed by a string of coordinates.

_Hot damn._ Clint collapsed his bow and packed it away in record time.

It was tempting to jog to the rendezvous point, but Clint played it cool, strolling at a normal pace. River was already waiting nearby when he arrived. She was leaning casually against the corridor wall, pretending to look through messages on her phone.

“Where’s Phil?” Clint asked.

“He hasn’t turned up yet,” River said, pocketing her phone. “It was supposed to be a synchronized notification. He probably just got held up.”

“I’m right here.” Coulson came around the corner, putting his own phone away. “Sorry, I was in with Fury. You guys waited for me?”

“Well, this is one for the team,” Clint said. He nodded his head at the doors at the end of the corridor. “Are we ready to do this?”

The library was empty save for Kaye at her post behind the desk. Clint wondered if that was coincidence, or if Kaye had managed to clear everyone out for a few minutes.

“Agents. Right on time,” she said. Kaye reached behind the desk and produced three packages wrapped in plain brown paper.

“Now, don’t go flashing these around,” she said sternly. “I don’t want a mob in here. These are eyes only until after Saturday of next week. Got it?”

“Got it,” Clint said, while River and Coulson nodded solemnly. They each accepted one of the packages and filed out of the library.

“Are we all set?” River asked.

“I put a hold on the south lounge,” Coulson said. “And I stashed some drinks and snacks in there yesterday. Online orders for pizza are set up and ready to send whenever we want. No crisis situations on the horizon. We’re set.”

“Awesome.” Clint grinned. “You know, River here didn’t believe me the first time I told her that Kaye could get the you-know-whats early.”

“Yes, well, I’ve been educated since then,” River said. “Let’s go read.”


End file.
